Ever wanted to start a business, but are simply not sure where to start to minimise risk or expand your network? If a lack of access to capital was the biggest challenge for entrepreneurs until now, history is being kind. With the lowest barriers to entry in the global online market, the time to launch an idea for profit on the net is ripe.Here are three considerations for launching an online business. Each is with a view to ...

The world of web design has seen many changes in last decade. How we design is determined by the times, the current trends and the latest fads in the age of blogs, Facebook and Twitter.Below are five factors currently affecting design.The Facebook interface Facebook is very proud of their 500 million+ active users who cumulatively spend over 700 billion minutes per month on Facebook. To avoid frustrating these Facebook literate users, web-designers are going to have to start following the ...

Enforcing statutory penalties on intellectual property infringements in the media industry is moving up a notch. In the US, a federal judge recently agreed to allow the US Copyright Group to force internet service providers (ISPs) to hand over the identities of at least 23 000 users who had sourced bootlegged copies of The Expendables via BitTorrent clients and file sharing.There’s of course no reason to target illicit downloads of The Expendables specifically, so the case seems more ...

It’s almost time again for E3 2011 and like Christmas, millions of boys and girls (mostly boys) across the globe are preparing to have their expectations calmly blown out of the water as their beloved consoles prepare themselves for an onslaught of new titles. Microsoft, Sony, EA and Nintendo will be the dominating forces at the E3 event and each one will do battle for the hearts and minds of the videogame junkie.From the 7th to the 9th of June ...

Depending on when you start counting, social media sites have been the world's favourite shiny new toy for almost a decade now.Today, valuations of these businesses are not serious until they have a billion or so pricetag attached to them. So what is driving these astronomical figures?Technology commentator Tom Foremski doesn't agree that a bubble is forming just yet, but he doesn't rule out the possibility.As Shakespeare wrote and Foremski quotes: "Double, double toil and trouble; Fire burn, ...

The 2011 Africa Awards for Entrepreneurship, open to entries from every country in Africa, is awarding up to $350,000 in prize money to successful entrepreneurs.Owners of profitable, growing enterprises (with annual revenues between US$1 - 15 million) can submit entries online until August 24, 2011. The Grand Prize Winner will receive US$ 100,000 and five other companies will receive awards of US$ 50,000 each.The awards are backed by the Omidyar Network and Legatum, a private investment group. The ...

Thanks to Barack Obama's successful use of social media in the 2008 elections, all politicians seem to have discovered Twitter and Facebook. From Cory Booker, the US mayor who tweeted his way through his city's snow crisis, to South African political parties sometimes brilliant use of social media in the recent 2011 Local Government elections this message has clearly spread.It does not always hit the mark though. Just as brands have sometimes "failed" in their social media usage, so ...

US technology writer Nicholas Carr is worried about what the internet is doing to our brains."The seductions of technology are hard to resist," Carr says in his new Book 'The Shallows', which has sold an estimated 50 000 hardback copies in the United States alone.But he thinks it's time to start trying.In a speech at last week's Seoul Digital Forum, Carr restated his concerns that the web is affecting the way people think and feel -- and even changing ...

When looking at the "Ryan Giggs case", in what some are referring to as a landmark ruling regarding free-speech and the internet, Twitter has released the details of UK users to a British local council.The particulars are that four officials of South Tyneside Council, unhappy with a blog run by a certain "Mr Monkey", decided to take action.Since the blog has now been taken down, exactly what it was that was written is difficult to ascertain. Reports vary from ...

In my travels along the social commerce road so far in South Africa, I’ve often been told that SEO plays no role in bringing in traffic to to group buying site.There are generally two kinds of sites, when you look at traffic: those where you want to rank well on SERPs to get the traffic in, and those where you pay through your nose on Google or Facebook to bring visitors. Unless, of course, your website has such an attractive ...